LED lighthouse simulator

This Christmas [Bill Porter] decided to show his parents that those college dollars were well spent. He upgraded the custom lighthouse light which he originally designed in high school for their garden fountain. He even went so far as to craft some retail-worthy packaging for the gift.

We think it’s a wonderful design, on a custom PCB and based around an ATtiny85. A real lighthouse has a spinning lens to aim the beam of light. When the lens sweeps across your viewpoint there is a sudden flash and he’s recreated that effect using PWM. Take a look at the video after the break and you’ll see what we mean.

I saw a very nice lighthouse hack last year hanging in a bar overlooking a harbour. The builder had taken a survey map of the harbour and local island and placed an LED poking through the map at any pointer there was a lighthouse or beacon or nav bouy with lights. Each light was the correct colour and had the correct flash pattern for that particular light. There were about eight lights represented on the map and the whole thing was mounted in a nice picture frame…